Lisaopolis.comA Nurse's Journey to a Healthy and Balanced Life

This evening I was in the mood for baking. I decided to make some muffins. I used a versatile muffin recipe as a guideline from Laura Secord Canadian Cookbook page 26. However I morphed the recipe quite a bit. Here is my version.

Mixed Berry Muffins

2 cups all purpose flour

4 tsp baking powder

A few shakes of salt

¼ cup granulated sugar

1 large egg

1 ½ cups milk

¼ cup margarine melted

¾- 1 cup mixed berries

(raspberry, blackberry, blueberry, strawberry)

Combine dry ingredient in a large bowl. Mix well. Add wet ingredients. Mix well. Bake at 350 degrees until lightly golden (toothpick comes out clean). Enjoy.

The muffins turned out very well. The mixed berries gave the muffins a lovely melody of flavors in each bite. I would definitely make this recipe again.

Below are a few images of the muffins.

 Last night I was in the mood to bake, so I decided to make a cake. Since we had some bananas in the house that were getting over ripe I thought it was time to use them up.
I decided to use one of my favourite recipes and change it to fit my desire to use up the bananas.  The origional recipe can be found in Oetker German Home Baking on page 15 it is titled Marbled Cake.

 Here is my new and madeover version

 Banana Marble Cake

 9 oz (250 g) butter or margerine
 9 oz (250 g) white sugar
 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
 3 teaspoons of imitation rum extract (or real rum)
 4 med-large eggs
 500 g of plain white flour
 3 teaspoons of baking powder
 1 cup of milk
 3 medium-large bananas
 3 level tbsp coco

 In a blender place the banana (in pieces), eggs, rum, vanilla, milk, margerine, and sugar. Blend until smoothe. In a bowl mix together the flour and baking powder.
 Add the liquid mixture (from the blender) to the bowl. Mix until well blended together. Place in a round cake pan, and bake at 350F until a tooth pick comes out clean when
 poked in the cake. Enjoy.

Today I decided to make some bread by hand. It has my first time making bread the old fashioned way. I use to make bread often when I was younger with the bread maker . However the bread maker died many years ago. I chose to make a basic french bread. A picked a recipe from an old book on the kitchen cooking/baking bookshelf.
 Here is the recipe from A Guide to Good Cooking–Five Roses Flour. I changed the 1.5 tablespoons of shortening to 1.5 tablespoons olive oil because it is a more healthy.
 I also modified the water from 1.5 cups water to one cup water one cup milk to add some extra calcium to the bread.
 

 French Bread

 1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
 1 tablespoon sugar
 1 cup warm water
 1/2 cup warm skim milk
 3 teaspoons active dry fast rising yeast
 4 cups all purpose flour
 2 teaspoons salt

 Comine dry ingredients in this order: flour, sugar, yeast. Mix well. Add the salt. Mix well. Add moist ingredients. Mix well with a spoon. Now knead until the dough is a nice
 consistency. Now continue kneading the dough for 10 minutes. Now place a towel over the bowl and let the dough rise for one hour. Punch the dough down and knead a few times.
 Shape the dough into two long rolls. Place on a cookie sheet and let rise for 30-40 minutes. Bake in the oven at 350 degrees F for 30-40 minutes. Enjoy.

The bread was very yummy.